The Dinosaur Dig Lecture

Dr. Michiana Bones, a world renowned paleontologist and a tenured professor
at the University of Chicago, is currently working on a dig in the Gobi Dessert
with scientists from the American Museum of Natural History and the National
Geographic Society. They are following in the steps (or steppes!) of Roy
Chapman Andrews, who traveled to this area for the first time in 1922, before
the area was overtaken by communists and forbidden to western travelers. When
she is not in far off and inhospitable places, Dr. Bones lives in Hyde Park,
with her husband Walter and their children, Dinah and Dmitri, who are sixth
graders at the University of Chicago Lab School. In fact their teacher is Blue
Balliett and some people say that she based her character “Petra” in her best
selling series on Dinah!

Dr. Bones and her team have recently made a great
discovery, rumor has it they have found several new dinosaurs! We have invited
Dinah and Dmetri to our house to tell us what they know about their mother’s big
find. They have also brought a few things for “Show and Tell,” which their
mother had shipped to them and has asked them to turn over to the Field Museum.
Actually, the Field Museum representative lives nearby and will be stopping by
to pick up the find from our house this evening at 6 p.m.

How do you get to the dig site? You fly to Ulaanbaatar
where you buy lots of supplies and hire a local Mongolian crew and several
trucks and jeeps and then you head out across the desert towards Dalandzadgad
and hope you recognize your site when you get close to it.

Dmetri and Dinah arrived here a little before 3 p.m. and
helped us get things set up. We ran a quick errand and when we got back, they
had left us this note. So I guess we will have to find other entertainment for
Anika’s birthday party. Actually,

you'd better find the things that Dmitri and Dinah hid all over town so they
wouldn't fall into the wrong hands, but where could they be?

The
Field Museum representative was a little late, thankfully. The turnover
was accomplished successfully.